{
  "id": "founding-fathers.origin",
  "term": "founding fathers",
  "sense": "origin",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 19,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "Members a collective self reads as having set its first walls, so current acts are read by whether those members would have set them.",
  "folk_gloss": "the people who founded a nation or organisation, invoked as a guide to what it should do now",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "member.social",
      "collective-self.shared",
      "narrative.self-story",
      "set.fix",
      "first.order",
      "wall.range-end",
      "current.present",
      "act.deed",
      "read.information",
      "self-model.reflexive",
      "legitimacy.endorsed"
    ],
    "interaction": "The narrative places the setting of the first walls in a few named members; a model of what they intended is then kept and consulted, so their past reach keeps setting walls long after they are gone.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "power held by a model of the dead",
      "a first setting that later settings must answer to",
      "disputes over the present fought as disputes over what the founders meant"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Hewlett-Packard codified its founders' management principles as 'the HP Way' and cited them for decades as the standard for company conduct.",
      "domain": "business"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "tradition.kept",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "tradition keeps a pattern of acting; founders are persons whose intent is kept as the measure"
    },
    {
      "id": "legacy.enduring",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "a legacy is a window left open; here the founders' reading is consulted as a rule"
    },
    {
      "id": "narrative.self-story",
      "type": "is-a",
      "note": "the origin chapter of a collective self's story, given authority"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "a company built on",
    "company built on",
    "founders vision",
    "founding fathers",
    "our founding fathers",
    "the founders vision",
    "the founding fathers"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-founding-fathers.origin"
}